Cleopatra: A Life in Daily Show / Colbert Report / Nightly Show / The Opposition

Dec 18, 2012 Nicholas rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2014-history-theme-republican-rome, 2015-history-theme-awesome-women

The number one most read and liked review of this book on this site is completely off-base and this review is pretty much going to be a defense of Cleopatra in response to Elizabeth Sulzby's unfair mischaracterization of the work (beginning with her ludicrous shelving of the piece as "historicalfiction").

As someone trained in the art of history research and writing, a history teacher, and a published historian, I found Cleopatra impressive and an eloquent piece of first-rate scholarship. Schiff The number one most read and liked review of this book on this site is completely off-base and this review is pretty much going to be a defense of Cleopatra in response to Elizabeth Sulzby's unfair mischaracterization of the work (beginning with her ludicrous shelving of the piece as "historicalfiction").

As someone trained in the art of history research and writing, a history teacher, and a published historian, I found Cleopatra impressive and an eloquent piece of first-rate scholarship. Schiff does what very few historians writing for a popular audience do: she provides a compelling and fascinating historiography of sources on her subject. By default, she has to. There are no extant original sources for the life of Cleopatra as there are for individuals like Caesar, Octavian or Cicero. Even archeology is difficult; the final resting place and mausoleum of Cleopatra has never been found and large parts of her palace have since sunk into the Mediterranean making excavation difficult as a matter of course. Schiff makes the detective work of constructing the life of Cleopatra both illuminating and fun. While narrating the pieces of her life we can put together from sources outside Ptolemaic Egypt and making inferences from more well-documented lives of pharoahs (and women) in Alexandria to provide context and supplement the guesswork, Schiff engages in fantastic detective work while providing a sort of meta-analysis of the divergent sources on Cleopatra's life - examining motive, politics, historical context and sociocultural factors that are illuminating and insightful. Schiff's biography is as much a story of the tales of Cleopatra and why they were told (almost universally to shore up patriarchy in different ages and to serve as a cautionary tale against the empowerment and education of women) as it is the fragmentary accounting of a poorly documented and important life. Those who want the rich detail that the solid record-keeping of western bureaucracies provide from late antiquity on will no doubt be disappointed by the lack of verifiable details, but I would still say that there's much to learn about the myth of Cleopatra and what it means to Western civilization and its Roman mania since the collapse of the Republic.

What Schiff does best is analyze the remarkable achievements of the young pharaoh and set a stark counterpoint to the oversexualized Elizabeth Taylor image that has persisted of Cleopatra since the time of her contemporaries. It's work in history that needs more attention. I can't think of a single significant female figure from history whose success hasn't been attributed at least in part to her sex appeal (or being at least partially crazy). Intelligent and powerful women in the traditional historical narrative either sleep their way to the top or pursue power and education "like men" - a characteristic unbefitting their sex. Schiff makes it her primary focus to shed light on what we do know of an Alexandrian upbringing in the Ptolemy family, what the sources say about her carriage and demeanor, her education, her political acumen in retaining power and expanding the influence of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the wisdom with which she ruled her people. Passages focusing on these attributes are placed in contrast to what misogynistic Romans and their cultural descendants recalled of her. In Schiff's words,

"Her power has been made to derive from her sexuality, for obvious reason; as one of Caesar's murderers had noted, 'How much more attention people pay to their fears than to their memories!' It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather than to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life. Against a powerful enchantress there is no contest. Against a woman who ensnares a man in the coils of her serpentine intelligence - in her ropes of pearls - there should, at least be some kind of antidote. Cleopatra unsettles more as sage than as seductress; it is less threatening to believe her fatally attractive than fatally intelligent...She remains on the map for having seduced two of the greatest men of her time, while her crime was to have entered into those same "wily and suspicious" marital partnerships that every man in power enjoyed. She did so in reverse and in her own name; this made her a deviant, socially disruptive, an unnatural woman. To these she added a few other offenses. She made Rome feel uncouth, insecure, and poor, sufficient cause for anxiety without adding sexuality to the mix."

Schiff's work explores the various ways Cleopatra threatened male ego by unpacking the rumors and tales that occlude the truth.

Schiff does not "create material" and is very careful to source passages describing her subject (in fact the sourcing is part of the story). I don't understand the criticism of the six page analysis of the political and educational climate of Ptolemaic Egypt in chapter two that Schiff uses to allow the reader to understand the conditions that forged the character and ambitions of Cleopatra. Plutarch is cited as a source for this context. So what? Sulzby asserts most of this information has been given "over and over in other works about Cleopatra." Again, so what? Chances are your average popular reader hasn't read Plutarch; furthermore, even if they had, why is it such a terrible thing to remind people of even if they knew it to begin with? Especially when placing such details in an entirely new light?

I found the recounting of the Ptolemies' intermarriages and familial politics to be rather engrossing and engagingly told on Schiff's part. She doesn't overburden the narrative with mazes of succession and settles instead for leaving the reader with the general feeling of the paranoid and vicious political atmosphere in which Cleopatra was raised to explain her actions during the war with her brother and the subsequent "removal" of her family from the political equation. While the story can get tangled here, memorization of the intricacies is not necessary and relevant details are reviewed at appropriate moments of real analysis.

As for the book being useful for "people who haven't studied Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, etc., before," I'd have to agree. It's a fantastic introduction to those characters, but the spirit in which that compliment is delivered seems to suggest that there are better narratives of their lives out there. For the men in that list, I'd be inclined to agree, but the purpose of this biography was to illuminate the life of Cleopatra and how her male contemporaries helped shape the choices she made and the subsequent narrative of her life. The details of the personality, achievements and legacy of the supporting cast of characters is concisely told and thoroughly analyzed without straying from the focus. This is not a history of the end of Republican Rome or the beginning of the Empire after all. If anything, I think Schiff does a remarkable job encouraging curious readers to seek out more information, while placing these figures in the grander narrative of Cleopatra's life - seeing them as she would rather than as her earliest chronicles assumed she had.

As an historian I appreciated the copious notes and extensive source list used by Schiff. As a reader I thoroughly enjoyed her narrative flair and organizational skill. There need to be more re-examinations of prominent women in history just like this. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up. Read it. Thoughtfully. There's as much to wonder at in the magnificence of the ancient world as there is to learn about the roots of patriarchy. ...more

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Feb 06, 2011 Celeste rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

I have a thing for biographies and autobiographies, and Caesar, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra (really anyone from around that time) really interest me, so it made sense to read this book.

Schiff brings wittiness and sass to her take on Cleopatra. She really takes an objective standpoint and it pretty darn critical of her sources. It's refreshing.

But in her quest for thoroughness, there are points when the reader gets bogged down in details about both Cleopatra and her various family members. Some t ...more

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Apr 09, 2012 Pang rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, history, book-club, nyt-recommended

Drama, drama, drama. Before this book, I didn't know much about Cleopatra. She was quite a fascinating woman. I think she was a survivor and tough. I get the feeling that she would have done better if Caesar was alive and that Marc Antony, in a way, was responsible for her ending. He was weak and may be even incompetent.

While the story was gripping, I found the writing to be less than enjoyable. I can't pin-point it exactly why, but it felt rushed. It felt nothing like other non-fiction I'd read ...more

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Feb 21, 2011 Judy rated it really liked it

An amazing biography of Cleopatra that made me realize how little I knew about her life. This Hellenistic queen was married twice--both times to her brothers. One of these husbands she waged war on and one she poisoned. Nice! Then she had children by both Julius Caesar (l) and Mark Antony (3). Cleopatra was talented, and ambitious and showed a great deal of political ability during her 22 year reign. Highly recommended for the excellent descriptions of Cleopatra's court, culture, and travels. ...more

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